Taking the concept of playable and collectable cards one step further by bringing it to an electronic format and succeeding fabulously, Tecmo brings us Monster Rancher Battle Cards. Based on their two other virtual pet/monster raising niche titles, Battle Cards takes the same previously established world and characters and gives them an entirely different style of play.

For the uninitiated, Diablo II is the sequel to the popular medieval RPG title that once again cast players in the role of an adventurer out to put an end to the newly resurrected Prince of Darkness, Diablo. Played from a diagonal three-quarter view perspective, the most surprising thing about Diablo II is its simple and console-like gameplay.

Junk food. You yearn for it, you stuff yourself with it—salivating with each morsel—then hours later you end up with a sick, empty feeling in your stomach and a funky taste in your mouth. In a strange way, the more I played Diablo II, the more I believed it was interactive junk food.

The generically titled Giga Wing—an overhead perspective, vertically scrolling airplane shoot-fest—is another console release in the same vein as Strider 2. Once again, Capcom is responsible (in this case I would call them the guilty party), only this time Sega's Dreamcast is the target.

Like Ben, I was eager to get my hands on a mindless 2-D shooter like Giga Wing. It was supposed to be a welcome break from the huge involving RPGs I've been playing of late. I never intended to scrutinize Giga Wing too severely as I usually lower my expectations for arcade ports and this type of game in particular. That's what makes the game such a sad case—it only needed to be at least average to garner a positive review from me, and it couldn't even do that.

Like any red-blooded, American boy, I was drawn to the superheroes that filled the pages of Marvel Comics and DC Comics. While I was a follower of the likes of Batman, Superman and even Wonder Woman, I would say that Spider-Man was my hands-down favorite. I made it a point of getting up at 5 a.m. every morning to catch the latest adventures of Spider-Man on TV. I was pretty much obsessed with anything Spider-Man related. I had a Spider-Man lunchbox, notebook, pencils, action-figures and coloring book. I even followed his adventures in the newspaper comics. As I grew up, I slowly put away my Spider-Man obsession only to engage in it again—albeit fleetingly—years later with the launch of the, then new, Todd McFarlaneSpider-Man series. Looking back, I always though it strange that I never played any of the Spider-Man videogames with much interest. After playing Activision's Spider-Man, I can only surmise it was because those games were nothing but one-dimensional fluff; because this game is the one Spider-Man game I've played that got it right.

In his opening paragraph, Dale said that this is the Spider-Man game that "got it right." While I don't doubt this is probably the best Spider-Man videogame ever made (though the old Atari 2600 one was pretty awesome for its time), I still think the developers missed the mark ever so slightly.

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